For the past seven weeks, Austen Williams has been leading a double life.
Williams, who took part in Fall Commencement on Sunday, Dec. 7,
earning a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, has been
juggling the life of a full-time college student with the life of a
young professional.

He has spent eight-hour days working as a regional application
engineer for Henkel Corp. in Rocky Hill, Conn., and has then come back
to his campus home to take classes, work on his senior capstone project,
and teach a physics lab.

“It’s been quite a balancing act,” said Williams.

Williams is in the enviable position of having been offered a good
job in his field weeks before graduation, thanks to his talent, drive,
and a co-op opportunity that he got through the University.
During the spring 2013 semester, Professor Cy Yavuzturk, one of Williams’s professors in the College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture
(CETA), asked his students if any of them would be interested in a
co-op experience at Henkel, in which they would work full-time for six
months while also receiving some college credit.

While the co-op would provide invaluable experience, it also would
mean graduating one semester late. A number of students expressed
interest in the co-op opportunity, but Williams was one of the few who
was willing to delay his graduation for one semester — a risk that
ultimately paid off.Henkel is an
international company based in Germany with leading brands and
technologies in several areas. The co-op was with Henkel’s adhesive
technologies division in Rocky Hill.
From June through December 2013, Williams worked full-time at Henkel,
performing lab tests and writing technical reports, and met regularly
with his advisor at CETA, Professor of Mechanical Engineering Robert Celmer. At the end of the six-month co-op, Williams wrote a paper about the experience.

During the summer of 2014, Williams’s former mentor at Henkel told
him about a job opening for a regional application engineer, and this
fall, Williams got the job. He has been working at Henkel two days a
week since Oct. 20, while he finishes his degree requirements and wraps
up his college career. He will start working full-time on Jan. 5.
As a regional application engineer, Williams will be working with the
sales team to determine which products best fit clients’ needs, and to
validate the application of those products through lab testing. Williams
said that his CETA coursework prepared him well for the co-op and for
his new job, by giving him the “problem-solving mentality” he needs to
be able to analyze and address engineering problems.

Williams, who plays a wide range of instruments — including guitar,
drums, piano, bass, harmonica, mandolin, and banjo — started at the
University of Hartford majoring in mechanical engineering with a
concentration in acoustics. He never considered a career as an
application engineer until his co-op with Henkel, but he has discovered
that it is a perfect fit for him.
“The co-op allowed me to see what an application engineer does. As
soon as I started, I thought ‘This is where I could see myself being
happy,’” said Williams, who enjoys working directly with customers and
coming up with solutions for their needs. “I really love it.”

Hartford needs to
nurture small entrepreneurial businesses for a bustling future

Hartford's many simmering businesses and ideas
must be encouraged

Architects
and planners like grand schemes. "Make no little plans," counseled
Chicago architect Daniel Burnham just over a century ago. But maybe today we
need to think differently about a city like Hartford, whose future might lie in
thousands of little things — creative and synergistic ideas —happening,
connecting, collaborating, sharing, shaping, building.

That
impression emerged from a lively panel discussion last week on imagining a new
Hartford, part of a series of exhibits and events at the Hartford Public
Library and the Connecticut Historical Society. The Courant's Tom Condon asked
the panel of four folks involved with creative, innovative organizations
working to change the city what Hartford will look like in 25 years.

Cities are
shaped by people and projects that can simmer for years until reaching a
boiling point, and the impression is that Hartford has an encouraging number of
pots on the stove. One is MakeHartford, headed by Steve Yanicke, who describes
the enterprise as a "gym for geeks" who like to make stuff.
MakeHartford is at 30 Arbor Street, in a space that offers folks access to
digital toys and tools like 3D printers (you can "print" objects).
Yanicke spoke about the allure of incubator space where people can meet, learn
to use new technologies and share knowledge. It's something of a free-form
collaborative, "connecting people who are doing things with other people
who are doing things," he explained.

Yanicke's
vision of the city is a place where new businesses, with very low starting
costs, attract other entrepreneurs just because innovative types feed off each
other. For Yanicke, one of Hartford's greatest assets is the empty buildings
that can become hotbeds of creative collaboration, leading to new businesses,
housing and communities. Yanicke noted that housing in downtown Hartford always
seems to grow in the wrong direction. Instead of more towers, Yanicke sees a
downtown thriving with more three- and four-story, mixed-use residential and
retail structures, where people live close to work, walk and actually meet
their neighbors.

Gina Muslim,
director of the Hartford Community Partnership, Community Solutions, sees the
former Swift gold-plating factory in Hartford's North End as similar to
Yanicke's idea of flexible incubator space. Rather than devoting Swift to one
use, Muslim imagines a place that combines work, living, health care and food
shopping within its 65,000 square feet. The idea is to create enough synergy in
one place to offer residents and the surrounding neighborhood a one-stop
community resource focused on job creation. The key, notes Muslim, is getting
the right mix of uses and anchor businesses, and then studying what worked and
what doesn't work so it can be replicated in other neighborhoods.

Food is the
critical component to successful revitalization. Cary Wheaton, executive
director of Billings Forge Community Works in Frog Hollow, sees new restaurants
and farmers markets, along with good housing, luring folks to city
neighborhoods. "Food and housing are the drivers" for community
building, says Wheaton, who noted that Billings has created about 100 jobs over
the past six years.

Echoing the
others on the panel, Wheaton cautioned against high-powered,
multimillion-dollar solutions. Sometimes a new idea is in plain sight. Like
closing cafeterias! Wheaton speculated on what would happen to the urban life
on Hartford's streets overnight if the city's major employers closed their
cafeterias and people had to leave work to have lunch. The economic driver for
new lunch places and busy streets is right there. "Small things connect
with other things, and that is sustainable community building," says
Wheaton.

Kristina
Newman-Scott, director of marketing, events and cultural affairs for the city,
thinks that Hartford's biggest problem is an inferiority complex. "We need
pride in the city," and to start taking advantage of the incredible
creative resources here. She pointed out that within its 18 square miles
Hartford has more than 300 arts and cultural institutions. "The challenge
is to connect these creative communities," says Newman-Scott, who also
sees incubator space and short-term, low-cost leases as a way to hot-wire new
retail. "Creative businesses grow out of a more do-it-yourself culture,
with the city serving as a platform," she believes.

So, what
will Hartford look like?

Michael
J. Crosbie is an architect in Essex and chairman of the University of
Hartford's Department of Architecture.